The Something Awful Mafia Wiki: The SA collaborative project for all things mafia related! It has mafia rules, common role information, and lots more, including a comprehensive list of mafia games played on SA. If you make a game, you'll want an account so you can add it to the wiki when it's over.

VoteFinder! Votefinder keeps a list of currently active games and automates the tallying process in games. The second post of this thread gives a little tutorial if you are modding your first game. If you have a problem with it, ask in the thread. It is being run by forum superstar Flying Leatherman who took it over from soru.

The Mafia New Game Sandbox & Announcement Thread: This thread is for discussing anything mafia! Mafia setups, previous mafia games, helping prospective mods to craft their own game, announcing said games once they are recruiting, anything! It is not for off-topic chat with the larger mafia community, that is for this thread!

how about everyone promises to try really hard in mafia and make posts and then we all join ecco's game which will have some delightful twist like a scum jailer- ninja juggernaut interaction and tmm and kash will get into a big argument about something dumb and then a bunch of people will lurk cuz theyre playing wow and then we'll no lynch d1/d2 and then ill say something like "mafia is dead " and ill mess up lylo and everyone will say "yeah mafia is doing great"

mafia.txt

For an actual answer, mafia was originally a party game, and is sometimes known as Werewolf, that has been adapted to a Play by Post system on the forums. In this game two factions battle each other to control the game. The Mafia (commonly called "scum" on SA) are an informed minority while the Town are the uninformed majority. Mafia players know the identities of each other and usually are able to communicate privately and secretly. Town players do not know who else is town and cannot communicate with anyone privately, but as a whole they outnumber the mafia players by roughly 3 to 1. The goal of the town is to eliminate all mafia, while the goal of the mafia players is reach parity with the number of town players. Both mafia and town often have special roles which will aide them in accomplishing their goals. There also may be players who are neither town nor mafia, called Third Party or 3P, who may have alternate win conditions such as surviving until the end of the game or being the only person left alive.

Mafia games have a moderator who is in charge of creating the game's story and roles. They will post in the discussion thread and the New Game Announcement thread that they have opened a game for a certain number of signups. After the amount of people they want sign up they will private message each player with a role. This role contains information about that person's alignment (mafia, town, or 3P), any extra powers they have, and often some sort of information about their character in the story.

Once the game begins it is divided into two phases: Day and Night.

During the day phase, all players discuss in the game thread who they believe is a member of the mafia, and then vote for that person. Our forums has a vote bot which tallies votes that are formatted ##vote Playername. Once one person has received a majority of the votes, that player is hanged and removed from the game. They can no longer participate in the thread or in any private communications they had access to while alive. The moderator will post that person's alignment and role in the thread and end the day phase.

Once in night phase, there is no voting, and conversation may or may not be prohibited depending on the moderator. During this phase, the mafia choose someone to kill. As well, any extra powers that a player may have can be used. There are many possible powers, and moderators often come up with new ones, but there are several common ones such as Cop, who can learn the alignment of one other player each night; Doctor, who can protect one player each night from being killed; or Tracker, who can track another player and learn about any targets they visit. Mafia may have powers such as roleblocker, who can prevent another player from using their special powers for a night. After all actions have been received by the moderator and processed, they will announce who has died during the night and begin the next day phase where the cycle begins again. This continues until one faction has reached their win condition and the game ends in victory for Town, mafia, and/or 3P.

While these are standard rules, there can be a lot of variation in setup. Almost all of these can and have been broken in one game or another.

This thread is for discussing all things mafia! Talk about completed games you have played in, rules and roles you like or don't like, variations on the above rules you think would be interesting, strategies you saw or came up with, or conventions that you don't understand.

This thread is also for general discussion within the SA Mafia community, and not necessarily related to mafia. We have a very active player base and despite what it may look like in games where we call each other idiots, we're all friends here. We do our best to leave any aggression from games in that game's thread. We are also very welcoming to newcomers, so feel free to hop in if you have questions or want to join a game. There are a number of offshoot projects like people playing other games using mafia players as characters, we had a virtual wrestling league, and we run a yearly Secret Santa. This is a very active thread and may appear daunting at first, but feel free to just jump right in wherever the conversation may be. There's no need to read back, just skip to the end and join in, or change the topic to something else if you want. It's very casual.

One hard rule to remember is to never talk about ongoing games outside of that game. Most people in the discussion thread are in one, if not more, mafia games at any time. If you've just died in a game, don't come to the discussion thread to talk about your role or anything that happened in the thread. Wait until the game is over, there's usually discussion in the game thread after a game has ended.

F.A.Q.

How do I sign up for a game?
Any games that are looking for signups will be listed in this OP. Just post in that game thread. If there are no games that are looking for signups feel free to ask if any games are starting. There are a lot of people who want to mod games and have setups ready to go, but are waiting to make sure there are enough people who want to play.

Can I join any game?
Absolutely, but read the OP of the game you are signing up for. There are some that are more complicated or unconventional than others and may not be the best type of game to play if it's your first time. Mods will usually list any unusual parts of their setup in their introduction.

What if I want to mod a game myself?
Go ahead! If you have modding questions or have a cool idea but aren't sure how to implement it, send a PM to Opopanax and he'll give it a look-over. Alternatively just asking the thread usually works as well! People are more than willing to be co-mods or help with balance for people who are just starting out. If you want to give modding a try but aren't comfortable balancing a game from scratch there are a couple of newbiesetups to help you get your feet wet. There is also a votefinder tutorial following this post.

I am really bad at this game How do I improve?
Everyone is bad at mafia. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. It can take a while to get into the swing of things and you will likely be called scummy in your first few games. The most important thing to do is relax and just have fun. Try to be honest with your opinions and don't be scared of being wrong. Better to have voiced your opinion and been wrong about it than to lurk and town has nothing to go on if you die. Remember that even if one or two people vote for you, they'll have to convince everyone else in order for you to die, so just keep on saying what you think. It's also possible that the people who are voting for you are not on the same side as you, so don't be discouraged when getting pressured. Finally dying is not a big deal! Most people are going to die during the course of a mafia game. Your death may give town important information that they can use to win or you may buy your scum team the leverage and town cred they need to carry them through the game. So just keep trying your best and if you die for it, there's always another game.

Someone said something mean and it hurt my emotions.
This is a game of deception and so people are going to be throwing around a lot of accusations. People may also be pushing you in order to test your reaction and see if you are town. This game does require a thick skin. but sometimes this can go too far and get personal. Remember that most of the time the game is just a game. People will be calling each other idiots and jerks in one game, and then chatting in the discussion thread 5 minutes later like nothing happened. That said, we are all friends here and if someone is genuinely upsetting, you should tell them (or the game's moderator) and that can help. Sometimes just walking away from the computer for a while is all it takes.

What does hammer or mean?
Hammer refers to when someone has reached the majority threshold to get hanged and end the day. The person who puts them over the top is said to have hammered them. Unless the mod has explicitly said otherwise, all conversation should immediately stop when someone hammers and the players should wait for the mod to post.

What does mean?

Helpful Links:

Mafiascum.net: Has a huge archive of games you can browse through, and you can play games there if you don't mind the (rather) slow pace.

Mafiascum wiki: They also have their own wiki with a list of various roles for inspiration. Note that these roles may be different from the standard on SA.

Role Spreadsheet: A spreadsheet compiled by SA forums user Met details lots and lots of different roles, with information about different classes of roles.

Votefinder is our tallying system on SA for mafia games and it has a whole bunch of very cool features!

How to make a game

1) Make a thread in The Game Room with Mafia in the title.

2) Make an account or Log in to Votefinder.

3) Go to Add a Game

4) Votefinder should list all current Mafia games in TGR. Choose yours and click the link to assign you as the moderator.

5) Once you have a page that looks like this, you're all done!

Important features

Most of votefinder is pretty self-explanatory, but there are a few features to note for first time moderators

How to change your playerlist

When you first ask votefinder to find your thread it's going to list everyone who has posted in that thread as part of the player list.

You'll want to take out people who aren't playing by dragging them to the spectator column.

Also remember to move players from living to dead before opening the next day.

Posting the Votecount

On the votecount tab you will see the current votecount for that day.

All players can see this tab and the box to manually copy and paste the current votecount, but only the moderator can use the "Post Votecount" button to make votefinder post. After this button has been pressed it will be unavailable for an hour.

The post votecount button makes votefinder post what the current votecount is, but you can also have an automatically updating picture of the votecount by clicking this button at the top of the page.

Put this in your OP (usually right at the top) so that your players can automatically check the votecount at any time without having to go to votefinder.

Finally, always make sure to post the votecount at the end of the day after someone has been hammered (they have reached the threshold to be hanged) since votefinder resets the votecount at the beginning of a new day. Knowing how everyone was voting at the end of the day is very important to town.

Making a playerlist

Under "Tools" votefinder will automatically create a playerlist that links each name to that player's post history in the thread.

This is an absolutely essential tool for your players as they will frequently be checking people's post histories. Replace your handmade player list during signups with this as soon as the game starts.

Closing your game

Always close your game!!! This will remove it from the active games list, so that list doesn't become cluttered and give you a wiki code for the victory. You'll need to register an account at the wiki to post it there. If for whatever reason you can't register, post the information in the thread and someone will add it for you. Just be sure to change (something) to whichever team won.

Making a Template

By default, votefinder posts look like this.

If you want votefinder to say something different or give different information you can change how votefinder will post by making a template. To do so click on your name and go to "My Templates"

From there you can go in and change text, how votes are displayed, what information is displayed, and so on. Click Show Instructions if you want to be sure you're not going to break it.

That's basically all there is to know about votefinder. It's a simple but invaluable tool when moderating a game.

So you want to mod a game of mafia! The most important thing to know is the basics: how the mechanics of different roles work and how they affect each other in tandem. For instance, a Cop is a standard town role, as well as a Doctor. But if the Cop claims, the Doctor can protect the Cop while the Cop investigates and clears players, meaning the Mafia can only stop the Cop once they find and stop the Doctor! This makes the game a lot harder for the Mafia than the moderator might have otherwise intended. However, giving the Mafia a Roleblocker or Godfather are helpful ways to organize the game so that, in case the Cop and Doc team up, the Mafia aren't left totally high and dry.

Ultimately you want a game that's balanced: a game where everyone has an equal chance of winning the game through roles alone, meaning players win or lose based solely on luck and skill. General pointers and balancing strategies:

The Mafia are always at an inherent advantage over the town because they alone already know everyone's alignment and have a team of players upon whom to rely. One Goon should be considered the equivalent of 2 or 3 Vanilla Townies for balancing purposes.

It can be tempting to fill your game with plenty of roles and powers, but doing so makes the game a lot more chaotic, making it that much harder to keep a game balanced.

Beware roles working in tandem; the above Cop-Doc combo is one example, but a Watcher-Doc combo can be even more devastating for the Mafia without the proper counters.

It is common practice to give the Mafia a role to dodge each town power role: a Roleblocker against a Doctor, a Godfather against a Cop, etc. Be careful with this however, since if you essentially nullify all the town's power roles, the Mafia - with their inherent advantage over the town - will steamroll the game.

Ask yourself: "what if everything goes absolutely right for the town. How quickly would the game be over? What if for the scum?" If your answer is "the game could end before Day 3," your setup is probably not balanced. Dumb down some of the power roles or take a mafioso or two away.

Also try to avoid a game that "plays itself." It's hard to describe what that is precisely, but it's easy to describe what it's not. Player agency should be tantamount: the game should be decided based on what the players do, the alliances they form, the posts they make and the cases they produce. If a game lacks agency - if players are just following roles to their inevitable conclusions - it's a less fun game.

Finally, don't be afraid to experiment! Especially if you're a newer mod, people will be very forgiving if you make an imbalanced game, even more so if they had a lot of fun playing it. Without experimentation games get dull and repetitive. But the best game is one that has new elements combined with solid, predictable balance, and a healthy number of vanilla townies round out the setup.

If you are someone interested in running a setup by an experienced set of eyes, feel free to message any of the following mafia players, who have in the past been more than willing to offer advice and guidance:

Discord Server - Our unofficial replacement for IRC and/or Skype because we can't make up our minds what platform we like. The link keeps expiring, so ask in the thread or PM me if you want to be added

I am going to say hi and then disappear for another year that sounds fun

Counterpoint: sign up for my game I just opened a few days ago it needs one player.

Also mafia thread! If you are someone who wants to field questions from newer players about modding games, post here or send me a PM saying as such and I will add you to my newly-updated third-post-sniper post about modding!